Raised in rural Iowa, 19-year-old Melissa Cross goes off to college in neighboring South Dakota in 1996, firmly in favor of women’s rights and admiring First Lady Hillary Clinton’s “unapologetic feminism.”
Finances were tight at her family, so after earning money baby-sitting, she’d starting busing tables at a restaurant at age 13. Television news told about women being raped and otherwise victimized. Melissa was appalled by domestic violence and aspired to “change the world from the top down” by working in politics or the law in Washington, D.C. But first she needed her degree.
The intense early days at the University of South Dakota had secrets shared between total strangers who soon became intimate friends. But adoptee Melissa had one secret in her life that didn’t fit into new students’ “conversations about every kind of abuse, abandonment, and human heartache.”
She was born while surviving a permissive saline abortion in 1977 at a Sioux City hospital.
Melissa learned this heartbreaking fact at age 14 after previously believing her birth mother heroically gave her up to a family who was in a better position to raise her. The revelation sent the young teenager into a tailspin, but she came to cope with it. She saw 14-year-old southern California saline-abortion survivor Gianna Jessen on television saying she was happy to be alive.
But even on a South Dakota campus, mass communications long since had made Northeastern Seaboard liberalism the currency of the culture.
Although Melissa “considered myself an ardent supporter of women’s rights,” she “learned quickly that my story was one that could not be heard, and therefore must not be told. Abortion on demand was the Holy Grail of the feminist ideology my classmates adhered to; anything that challenged its essential rightness must be suppressed.”
The “icy chill” she encountered “hurt me in a very deep place.” Melissa went through the motions for the semester, but as soon as finals were over in December, she left that university, her hope for a career in politics killed by political correctness — “my early idealism and passion had given way to indifference.”
Years later, Melissa was to learn that her birth mother had attended the same school, and that the woman who insisted that Melissa be aborted in 1977 was a professor at the College of Nursing while Melissa was there. “Did we ever cross paths and unwittingly look each other in the eye?”
Melissa went back home and enrolled at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. She started working at a domestic-violence shelter but encountered so much pain among its clients that she decided to take undergraduate courses in psychology to increase her understanding, intending to apply to a graduate program.
We see that rural Iowa suffers from the same malign serpent as the Garden of Eden, and in big-city ghettoes.
One weekend when she was working the shelter’s crisis hotline, she received a hysterical call from the mother of two cute little boys Melissa met through the shelter. The boys were dead, killed in a suspicious accident involving their father.
After the call, “I collapsed . . . in tears of impotent rage. Why is there so much evil in the world?”
By now she no longer is a wide-eyed young student, so let’s start calling Melissa by her eventual last name, Ohden.
Determined to expand her abilities, Ohden looked forward to earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She enrolled in a class with “a brilliant senior faculty member” she respected and hoped could advise her on her career plans.
He assigned his students to write a paper on a pivotal life experience of theirs. Ohden poured herself into her only possible choice, being an abortion survivor. Systematically putting it unflinchingly on paper, “It was the first time I’d shared this critical part of my life with anyone trained in psychology.”
She received an A for technical analysis, but “harsh” comments in the margin. “This must be a lie,” the professor wrote. “Why would your parents tell you such an awful thing?”
Ohden was astounded. She was being silenced again, being struck down as she had been at the previous university. Now she could see the reason clearly: The professor “simply could not reconcile his support for abortion with the existence of a living, breathing survivor.”
This brought Ohden to a new pivotal moment. She either could lie down and acquiesce in being silenced, “or confront it. I chose to stand tall. I wanted to force people to face the contradiction that my existence posed to their ideology.”
Thus began the mission of her life.
As she began speaking out about being a survivor, each time she “met people who had been directly hurt by abortion and who suffered in silence. I knew how it felt to be marginalized and stifled and disbelieved. . . . I felt increasingly called to be a voice not for myself, but for others.”
Why is it that the dominantly liberal media go out of their way to ignore, scorn, mock, or demonize pro-lifers, who only ask for tens of millions of innocent babies and moms to be spared? Because “progressives” who consider themselves the leading shining moral lights and champions of compassion can’t deal with confronting the facts of their deep complicity in painfully executing millions of helpless human infants.
They hopped on the back of the tiger when it was a beguiling cub; now they dare not climb down and expose themselves to its fangs and claws, but let it rip and slash everyone in its path.
Former Virginia abortion clinic head nurse Joan Appleton went through mental agonies when she finally realized she was doing severe damage to women she only had intended to help. But Appleton made herself confront facts instead of hiding from them as today’s dishonest media wizards insist on doing.
It’s up to God to judge motivations, sincerity, and intentions, and I have my sins to be judged on, as everyone else does. I just know I wouldn’t want to be in the sandals of the proud, propagandistic pharisees at The New York Times who literally have spent decades publishing the liberal news “bible” that adores massive abortion and has shoved whole societies down into this hell.
Sparing people from difficulties in life, even minor ones, is one reason that pro-abortionists give in their own defense, but Ohden’s book reminds us that life on this Earth isn’t guaranteed to be an endless Hawaiian vacation. However, the solution mustn’t be either the eugenicists’ or the genocidal.
We’re made to face up as best we can to current difficulties, looking for the eventual justice and reward that only God can give.
And if one doesn’t believe in God, how can that person then justify destroying the only life that he thinks an innocent baby ever will receive?
Ohden’s adoptive parents already had taken one little girl into their home when they added Melissa. The parents, who hadn’t been able to conceive their own offspring, cried when their farm was auctioned off. They had to work harder to support the family they acquired.
Melissa, as noted, was having to earn money even before she turned 13. In her own future marriage, she was to lose a little boy to miscarriage and give birth to a second daughter, who began her life outside the womb with serious health issues. Ohden eventually became Catholic.

Keep Speaking

And after years of inquiry, she learned that her birth mother was forced into the abortion that Ohden survived. Indeed, the teenager tried to run out of the hospital after the abortion began, but a nurse stopped her and said it was too late.
The mother of the birth mother — Ohden’s grandmother, a nurse — had determined that her unmarried daughter was pregnant. The daughter herself hadn’t realized this yet, Ohden writes, but was ordered immediately to break up with her fiancé and to sell the engagement ring she wore to help pay for the saline abortion that rapidly was arranged.
The birth mother didn’t know her baby survived. Indeed, the grandmother was in the hospital room when the infant emerged, and demanded that she be left to die, but other nurses defied her and rushed Melissa to newborn intensive care.
Ohden struggled with what she was learning about her tragic arrival, when her birth mother told her “to keep speaking. You are the first person to ever fight for me.”
“I can’t begin to express how much those words meant,” Ohden writes of her mission to bring the facts before the public. “My mother knew I cared. We were on the same side. Through me, her story could be told.”
Contrary to some people’s belief that abortion is just a private act without lasting effect, Ohden concludes, “They are so wrong! Abortion can’t be compartmentalized and is never forgotten. And its effects ripple through generations.”
Prime evidence of which is the infants born to people who weren’t aborted. Unlike Ohden, aborted babies usually bear no future children. Which population controllers and eugenicists count as another triumph as they dig the graves of their own souls.

Vatican City, Feb 17, 2018 / 05:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Saturday the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has reconfirmed Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston as head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, also reconfirming seven members…Continue Reading

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to the Trump administration’s 2019 federal budget proposal on Monday, the U.S. Catholic bishops are urging for a budget that shows greater concern for “‘the least of these” and warning that the U.S. “must never seek…Continue Reading

A Connecticut high school student may have to decide whether to remove a Planned Parenthood sticker on her laptop or leave her Catholic school after administrators told her to remove it, her parents said. Sophomore Kate Murray’s parents told the Greenwich Time that…Continue Reading

February 8, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Bible’s condemnation of homosexual acts should be taken in “context” with Biblical times, Jesuit Father James Martin toldGeorgetown University students recently. Martin said as well that Catholics who support gay “marriage” should have no problem…Continue Reading

JACKSON, Mississippi, February 2, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A bill banning abortion on babies more than 15 weeks old passed the Mississippi state House today 79-31. House Bill 1510 would make Mississippi the state with the most pro-life laws if it…Continue Reading

Just three Democrats in the U.S. Senate supported a bill on Monday that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks when unborn babies are capable of feeling pain. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which has strong public support from Republicans…Continue Reading

ROME, January 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In an exclusive interview two weeks after issuing a profession of immutable truths about sacramental marriage, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is inviting his brother bishops around the world to join in raising a common voice…Continue Reading

As Katholisch.de, the official website of the German bishops, reports today, Cardinal Willem Eijk, the Dutch cardinal and Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, requested that Pope Francis bring light into the confusion concerning the question as to how to deal with…Continue Reading

When Selena Miller, a practicing Catholic, applied to DePaul, she had no idea it was a Catholic university. Damita Meneves, another practicing Catholic, said she has met only one other Catholic student in her first year at DePaul. DePaul is…Continue Reading

His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, spoke recently with Thinking with the Church, hosted by Chris Altieri, who is also a regular contributor to Catholic World Report. Cardinal Burke responds to questions regarding the interpretation and reception of the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris…Continue Reading

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By DON FIER (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wis., graciously took time out of his busy schedule to grant The Wanderer a wide-ranging interview during a recent visit to the Shrine. Included among the topics…Continue Reading

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke delivered the address below at the 32nd Annual Church Teaches Forum, “The Message of Fatima: Peace for the World,” Galt House, Louisville, Ky., July 22, 2017. The address is reprinted here with the kind permission of Cardinal Burke. All rights reserved. This is part one of the…Continue Reading

Catechism

Today . . .

There’s nothing, it seems, that the abortion chain Planned Parenthood won’t sue over. On Thursday, affiliates of the abortion chain in seven states sued the Trump administration for cutting funding for their questionable teen pregnancy prevention programs. The Daily Nonpareil reports the lawsuits argue that the Trump administration wrongly cut their funding prematurely and without cause. Nine groups, including Planned Parenthood affiliates in Washington, Iowa, North Carolina, South C

CAMBRIDGE, England, February 15, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A respected Catholic historian and philosopher challenged Cardinal Blase Cupich during a lecture last week about Pope’ Francis so-called “revolution of mercy” that has caused what many are defending as a “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice. Professor John Rist, after listening to a February 9 lecture at Cambridge Universityin which Cardinal Cupich praised Pope Francis’ “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice, asked the Cardinal at the end of the lect

VIENNA, Austria, February 14, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Austria’s bishops, led by Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, are indignant over a retired bishop’s passionate defense of Catholic teaching in opposing Church “blessings” for homosexual unions. After Bishop Andreas Laun, the retired Auxiliary Bishop of Salzburg, Austria, published Monday his strong rebuke of the German bishops for proposing to bless homosexual couples, there has been an inten

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago is all for clarity. It has been a consistent theme, as when in September of 2017 he issued a decree banning guns in all parishes, schools and other facilities across the archdiocese “so there would be absolute clarity on our position.” His official statement put “clarity” in italics. When he was bishop of Rapid City, he called for “civility and clarity” in discussing legislation that would limit abortion, but he…Continue Reading

BEIJING — A group of influential Catholics published an open letter Monday express their shock and disappointment at report that the Vatican could soon reach a deal with the Chinese government, warning that it could create a schism in the church in China. The Holy See has been in negotiations for several years with the Chinese Communist Party and is now belie

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Within a week of taking office on January 23, 2017, President Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, now called the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, which bans U.S. funding for abortions overseas. The expanded policy prohibits $9 billion in U.S. taxpayer money from funding foreign organizations that perform or…Continue Reading

By HANNAH BROCKHAUS VATICAN CITY (CNA/EWTN News) — The Congregation for the Causes of Saints has approved the second miracle needed for the canonization of Blessed Pope Paul VI, allowing his canonization to take place, possibly later this year. According to Vatican Insider, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the miracle by a…Continue Reading

By STEPHEN M. KRASON (Editor’s Note: Stephen M. Krason’s Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic column appears monthly [sometimes bimonthly] in Crisis. He is professor of political science and legal studies and associate director of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is also cofounder and president of…Continue Reading

By LISA BOURNE (Editor’s Note: LifeSiteNews ran this story on February 5.) + + + A Catholic priest is calling on bishops to excommunicate the 14 Catholic-identifying U.S. senators who voted two weeks ago against banning late-term abortions. He is also calling on priests to deny the Catholic pro-abortion senators Holy Communion. “Today is the…Continue Reading

By JAMES LIKOUDIS The centuries-old theological debate concerning the existence of Limbo for unbaptized babies (the limbo puerorum as a state of natural happiness) led to the 2007 publication of the document The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized by the International Theological Commission (ITC). The commission concluded there are “serious…Continue Reading

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Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

By DON FIER For a variety of reasons (a defect of consent, a diriment impediment, or a defect of the required form), many supposed modern-day marriages entered into by Catholic persons are invalid from their origin in the eyes of God and the Church. However, as we saw last week, depending on the circumstances, the Church has procedures by which…Continue Reading

Q. Concerning what our Blessed Mother said in Fatima about the rosary, I am confused as to whether or not she meant us to meditate on the mysteries while we are praying the Hail Marys or whether she meant us to meditate on the mysteries right before we say the Hail Marys. The consensus seems to be that we are…Continue Reading

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Second Sunday Of Lent Readings: Gen. 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 Romans 8:31b-34 Mark 9:2-10 In the first reading today we hear about Abraham’s nearly incomprehensible act of faith and love for God shown in his willingness to sacrifice his own son. We have to be careful not to read this in a vacuum. This test, which…Continue Reading

By ANDREA GAGLIARDUCCI (Wanderer Editor’s Note: Catholic News Agency on February 3 published a commentary concerning a 1989 Vatican response to dissent against Humanae Vitae. Below is an excerpted version of that commentary. Following that, we reprint the full text of the 1989 Vatican response, which, as the CNA commentary explains, is now available on the Vatican’s website. Please also…Continue Reading

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK A joke sometimes recounted among clergy goes along these lines: Someone greets a wise old priest by asking, “What’s new?”, and he responds, sagely, “Christ is risen!” The humor here is less about what’s new than about the fact that everything, other than the only true revolution of Christ’s Incarnation and triumph over death, is…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN Great sinners make great saints. It takes a strong-willed child to become a saint. These are statements which would easily fit saints such as Mary Magdalene and St. Augustine. In the thirteenth century, a young lady free in spirit and strong in will led such a life that she was essentially driven from her home village, but…Continue Reading

By CAROLE BRESLIN In the lives of the saints one thing is very common: They have such a strong desire to do God’s will that nothing will hinder their work. Many saints, despite illness, weak health, or many other obstacles achieved their goals. Frequently the amount of work accomplished by such individuals seems humanly impossible — and, of course, it…Continue Reading